“In Parodius, Konami takes a sideswipe at the console shoot ’em up establishment,” Computer and Video Games wrote in 1991, “and why not, seeing as they’re responsible for most of it?” Konami made Gradius, the horizontal shooter with the power-up bar, and Parodius is the same game played for laughs. The ship can be an octopus or a penguin, the first boss is a pirate galleon shaped like a cat, and a megaphone mounted on the nose shouts Japanese phrases at the enemy. The name, as Mean Machines spelled it out, is “Parody + Gradius”.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Konami.
- First game: Parodius: Tako wa Chikyū o Sukuu (“the octopus saves the Earth”), MSX, 1988, Japan only.
- Arcade: Parodius Da!, 1990, released in Europe as Parodius.
- Conversions: NES, Game Boy, PC Engine, Super Nintendo, and later PlayStation and Saturn.
- Ships: Vic Viper from Gradius, TwinBee from TwinBee, Takosuke the octopus and Pentarou the penguin.
From the MSX to the arcade
The series began on the MSX, the home computer standard on which Konami published many of its 1980s games. Edge listed Parodius among the games that “made their first official appearances on MSX”. Its penguin hero was older still: Retro Gamer points out that Pentarou first appeared in Konami’s Antarctic Adventure, which explains the series’ “inexplicable obsession with penguins”.
The arcade game came in 1990. Edge later summed up its progress: “Starting life as a coin-op in 1990, Konami’s superbly crafted parody of its classic Nemesis became one of the best shoot ’em ups on the PC Engine and SFC”. (Nemesis was Gradius’s name in Europe.)
How it plays
Underneath the jokes it is Gradius. Shot enemies leave power-up icons, and each one collected moves a highlight along a bar of upgrades at the bottom of the screen, from speed-ups to shields. Players can pick when to cash it in or let the game choose. Some icons start a roulette instead, flicking along the bar at speed; stop it on a weapon you already have and, Mean Machines warned, “you lose all your current power-ups”. Each of the four ships has its own weapons: TwinBee a three-way shot and a “Rocket Punch”, the octopus a “Ripple” of rings, Pentarou a spread of exploding bullets and a bubble shield.
The other half comes from TwinBee: bells that change colour when shot. A golden bell is worth points, a blue one gives a smart bomb, a red one adds miniature ships that fire lasers, and a green one inflates the ship like bubble-gum, making it invulnerable but unable to fire. The silver bell bolts on the megaphone, which, in Mean Machines’ words, destroys enemies “by shouting a selection of withering Japanese phrases at them”.
The stages
Nintendo Magazine System’s guide to the Super Nintendo version describes what the player meets. There is a castle of sweets guarded by rows of grinning lips and teeth; a stage of sumo wrestlers who walk across the ceiling and whip the ship with their loincloths, ending with a sumo boss whose stomach is his weak spot; a mothership wearing shades and smoking a pipe, followed by a female Easter Island head that spits out statues; a pinball table; a dream of pink clouds where a giant girl blows bubbles full of imps; frozen waters full of begoggled penguins; and a bathroom where an octopus washes its head with soap. The final boss, a giant octopus, “doesn’t move” and “doesn’t fire”. The music, Computer and Video Games noted of the Game Boy version, mixes Gradius themes with “pepped-up classical tunes”.
The conversions
Computer and Video Games reviewed the Game Boy version on import in September 1991, liked the “tremendous” bosses and called it “one of the best shoot ’em ups yet seen on the Game Boy. An essential purchase!” The Super Nintendo version followed in 1992. Mean Machines thought it “the best version of the game ever”, with “pirate penguins and sumo-wrestling pigs” and some slowdown on the hardest settings, and one reviewer added that he had enjoyed it “on the NES, Gameboy and PC Engine” before. It reached number two in the magazine’s Super Famicom chart.
Sequels
| Game | First released | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Parodius: Tako wa Chikyū o Sukuu | 1988, MSX | the first game |
| Parodius Da! | 1990, arcade | Parodius in Europe |
| Gokujō Parodius | 1994, arcade | Fantastic Journey in Europe; Super Play counted eleven characters in the Super Famicom version |
| Jikkyō Oshaberi Parodius | 1995, Super Famicom | |
| Sexy Parodius | 1996, arcade |
The 32-bit consoles got the arcade games almost whole. Edge previewed the PlayStation Gokujō Parodius “Deluxe Pack” in January 1995, which included the original arcade game too, as a test of the new machine’s 2D abilities. Retro Gamer later called the two arcade games “like playing Gradius programmed by lunatics — but still manage to be utterly brilliant”, and described Sexy Parodius as playing “just as well as the other games in the series”.
Sources
- Computer and Video Games issue 118, September 1991, p. 83: Paul Glancey’s import review of the Game Boy Parodius (the four ships; the cat galleon; Gradius themes and classical tunes; “An essential purchase!”).
- Mean Machines issue 19, April 1992, p. 11: Super NES Parodius news (“Parody + Gradius”; the PC Engine version).
- Mean Machines issue 23, August 1992, pp. 20–23 and 97: Super NES Parodius review (the power-up bar and roulette; the bells; the four ships’ weapons; “the best version of the game ever”; the NES, Game Boy and PC Engine versions; Super Famicom chart).
- Nintendo Magazine System issue 5, February 1993, pp. 61 and 70–72: Super NES Parodius guide (the ships, the bells, the stages and bosses).
- Edge issue 16, January 1995, p. 44: PlayStation Gokujō Parodius Deluxe Pack preview (“Starting life as a coin-op in 1990”).
- Edge issue 46, June 1997, p. 54: Parodius among the games that first appeared on the MSX.
- Super Play issue 27, January 1995, p. 32: Gokujō Parodius (Ultimate Parodius) on the Super Famicom, eleven characters.
- Retro Gamer issue 15, 2005, pp. 31 and 33: the Konami MSX collection; Pentarou from Antarctic Adventure.
- Retro Gamer issue 53, 2008, p. 59: Sexy Parodius. Issue 54, 2008, p. 58: the Saturn and PlayStation Parodius compilation.
- Sega Retro, “Parodius” (web, secondary): Parodius Da! in 1990, the four characters, the conversions; Gokujō Parodius in 1994. https://segaretro.org/Parodius
- Wikipedia, “Parodius” (web, secondary): the series list and years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parodius